:shrug: I'll get used to it.
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
40 points (97.6% liked)
Australia
4570 readers
181 users here now
A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.
Before you post:
If you're posting anything related to:
- The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
- Politics, post it to Australian Politics
- World News/Events, post it to World News
- A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian
If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:
- When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment
Banner Photo
Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
- Aussie Memes
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Moderation
Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.
Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
i.e. the make it look attractive to special needs kids school of design
eww, grow up
Are you guys all boomers or something? The old website was absolutely terrible and well overdue for an upgrade. It desperately needed a version that scaled well and was accessible for mobile users, since that is how we access the internet in 2025 (inb4 irrelevant anecdote about yourself). The only bad thing about the new one is that they're still insisting on this cringe "The Bureau" branding.
was accessible for mobile users, since that is how we access the internet
We? Who is we? You don't speak for everyone and it seems to be an over generalisation.
got some facts for that ( I'm a gen xer )
It's stupid logical fallacies and talk like that that lead people to vote for arseholes.
But anyway tell me about that internet thing you young whippersnapper? ;) I've only been using it since 1982
As a fellow gen xer, I'm hoping this is sarcasm or satire.
We? Who is we?
we as in, according to usage data, the large majority of australian internet users
(inb4 irrelevant anecdote about yourself)
gottem
I'm not sure if I should be furious or laughing my ass off.
Well played.
Ilandar used Confusion!
It's super effective!
My first impression is not liking it. But I haven't dug into it much. I did like the old one. The design of Hong Kong's is more to my taste. My criticism is purely visual at this point.
Tried to submit feedback telling them that their feedback button covers the rain radar map controls on iPhone, only to have recaptcha prevent me from submitting the feedback, even after successfully completing it.
So I guess that sums up my thoughts so far. Do they seriously not have anyone test the site on a phone before they push it?
Also tried giving feedback, pile of errors and wouldn't accept it.
Same
And still doesn't support TLS / HTTPS...
Huh? It's https now for me.
What shits me is they cut their meteorology budgets to pay for it
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I don't actually mind it. There's now a bunch of layers that are selectable on the radar page itself, which were either nonexistent or hard to find on the old site. There's an easy to understand hourly forecast, instead of the text only one (which is still there), and I had no problem finding the 7 day forecast. Also there's finally HTTPS by default!
Of course if you don't like it, this still seems to work for the old website: https://reg.bom.gov.au/
New layout is way easier to view on my phone. current temp, feels like, max temp, rain ml all immediately visible for my local area. And a big old button to push me down to a scrollable rain radar. Easy.
I love the new, human readable time also.
It's a win
In the past on non humans could read it.
Yeah, I liked having a bookmark of the nearest radar - I could immediately bring it up with one click and see what's happening. The new system with the pannable map, you just have a view of the whole country, and must zoom into where you actually are to see what's happening.
The weather predictions layout is.. fine, but the old one definitely felt more like you had all the info you needed right there where this one you have to click 7-Day Forecast and then expand Tomorrow to see more detail.
One click and you're there.
Sigh, time to rewrite my scraper so I can have just the facts in my top panel again. Last one got like 5 years I think, hopefully they're not going to up the pace...
https://www.bom.gov.au/catalogue/data-feeds.shtml
Just use one of their feeds. Why on earth would you mess around with scraping the web UI?
Why not just pull the data from their ftp or something downstream like openmeteo?
I personally like it. I wish it were a little more compact, but it seems to be nearly feature parable with the old one and looks a little more up to date. This seems to be a step up in accessibility, both in terms of screen reader compatibility and behaving more in line with what an average user would expect. They've apparently even gone the extra mile to ensure existing bookmarks keep working.
Having been behind a couple of these modernization efforts, no one ever likes them. People complain every time but the user testing doesn't lie. Unfortunately redesigns are necessary as technology and user expectations change and considering the fact that the old website didn't play well on mobile and was well over 10 years old (15 if you're counting from the last major redesign) I'd say this one was pretty due. The fact this redesign even kept nearly every feature and option (as far as I can tell), rolled out fairly smoothly, and hasn't gone too overboard with minimalism/lack of character, I'm willing to call the redesign good.
Having been behind a couple of these modernization efforts, no one ever likes them. People complain every time but the user testing doesn't lie.
The people who complain about everything complain every time. Most see the new website, think "cool" or "where did everything go?" and get on with their lives. Places like reddit and Lemmy are disproportionately filled with complainers, because most people don't care enough to get online and moan about every little thing in life. They are actually out in the world doing and enjoying things. This is why every single live service game subreddit is full of 24/7 whining from the same people. The majority of the playerbase is happily playing the game while these people are crying on social media.
I’d say this one was pretty due.
Why is it due? What was wrong with the old one?
What does screen reader compatibility even mean? Whose screen? Mine? I use a lap top.
Who cares what the average user expects, it's up to the smart people to set the standard, not the other way around.
What was wrong with the old one?
- As previously mentioned, it was not mobile friendly. Phones make up most internet traffic, so you're actively making your website inaccessible to most people by not supporting that platform
- The old website was built on outdated technologies and was not HTTPS compatible
- It looked dated, and (as much as they shouldn't) people will make judgements about the quality of your service based on aesthetics. If they want to compete with other weather websites, which I think they should, they need to play the part
- The old website had multiple usability issues (e.g. interactive target sizes, other things I list below, ...)
What does screen reader compatibility even mean? Whose screen? Mine? I use a lap top.
Screen reader. Like for blind people. Who need the screen read out to them. Verbally. By software. Whom the government should be considering while building digital services. See previous mention about "usability issues".
Who cares what the average user expects, it’s up to the smart people to set the standard
I'm glad you consider yourself among the smart people. I haven't worked with the designers on this particular project, but like most I've worked with before I would assume they're also reasonably intelligent. They'll understand, just like I'm sure you do, that a good interface is an intuitive one. We all have mental models of how we expect software to "feel"; how it should navigate, be structured, and just behave in general. Any time you break that model, you add friction as the user has to learn how your specific app behaves. Of course, there are sometimes good reasons to do so, but I would argue that the weather, which is generally considered a basic task, is not one of them. Therefore, updating their website to match common, modern, and well reasoned design patterns to make it more accessible to new users is reasonably justified.
That said, existing users of BoM already have a mental model of the website, and by updating it they're breaking it. They're essentially privileging the experience of new users and they should be careful to ensure the redesign is actually necessary. This is a trade off of all redesigns but, considering my previously mentioned issues with the old website, and their clear effort to maintain feature parity, I would argue that that is fair in this case.
I love it.
Meanwhile the BOM app is far less accurate than Apple weather; often laughably so. They should focus their efforts on improving their data and modeling instead of superficial shit.
They cut budget on data and modelling to pay for this makeover! https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2025/02/01/exclusive-bom-diverted-hundreds-millions-cover-cost-blowouts
The data source for Apple Weather is the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology.
https://support.apple.com/en-vn/105038
Also, perhaps have another look at how to use a semicolon properly next time you want to badmouth highly-educated public servants.
I agree with WhatAmLenny. It might use the same data source but the way information is presented is a lot more usable. Case in point - when it’s going to rain, it gives you a pretty accurate “rain is going to start in x minutes” and a graph of how heavy it will be.
It’s not just about the raw data but how people consume it.
motherr might agree that apple weather is more usable too… however, “accurate” was the assertion being corrected and usable had nothing to do with it
Best rain app, which is more accurate than apple weather with rain alerts: https://www.rainparrot.com/
They're using machine learning on the BoM radar and doing a great job with it.